LARTS 394 — Norse Mythology: Roots and Influence in the Present

3 credits SpringJo Sarzotti

Icons of Norse mythology — Vikings and Wagnerian opera — are well known; but the stories themselves and the culture whose religion they constituted are not often studied. In this course we will read the sources of Norse myth, the prose Edda and the poetic Edda, as well as documents describing the first millennial explorations of the New World by Vikings. We will compare the Norse myths to the Greek and Sumerian and then look at later embodiments of the spirit and characters of Norse culture in works by Goethe, Wagner, Nietzsche, Tolkien, and Bergman's film The Virgin Spring.